Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen (1)

Who but the extraordinary Cate Blanchett could take on the roles of Elizabeth I and Bob Dylan? Geoffrey Macnab applauds the Katharine Hepburn of our times



英國人很機歪，使用不少艱深字彙。聽膩對凱特的歌功頌德，看看被檢視的缺點也是很不錯的，即使有些很莫名其妙。除了和凱薩琳赫本的對照，這篇文章也提到平常比少提的舞台劇，值得一看！

















"Clocks, watermelons, the roar of the universe," Cate Blanchett replied in typically gnomic fashion when asked recently what Bob Dylan meant to her. The Australian star has just won a Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for her performance as... Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'm Not There. Haynes chose Blanchett – one of six actors who portray Dylan in the movie – because he wanted a woman. "I felt it was the only way to resurrect the true strangeness of Dylan's physical being in 1966, which I felt had lost its historical shock value over the years."



「狄倫對妳來說是什麼？」「時鐘，西瓜，這浩瀚宇宙的喧囂。」凱特一如以往地給予箴言式的答案。這位澳洲女星才剛在威尼斯拿下影后，扮演的角色叫作巴布狄倫。陶德想找個女人來扮演狄倫，於是找了凱特。「我覺得只有找凱特才能將狄倫在一九六六年怪異的形體具象化，這是人們隨著時間逐漸淡忘的。」



老實說我不是很能理解凱特想表達什麼，大概又取自某種典故吧！

應該是仿傚狄倫那時的語無倫次吧！凱特很幽默的。









Judging by the critical response, it was an inspired choice. "Blanchett is, appropriately enough, truly electrifying," wrote Todd McCarthy in Variety, pointing out that the Australian actress had "uncannily got down the skittish movements, wary eyes, curt mumble and occasional flashes of brilliance, and comes far closer than anyone else to approximating the Dylan the public knows."



「凱特，恰如其分地，璀璨奪目。」「(凱特) 不著痕跡地抓住了那膽怯的舉止，疲憊的眼神，唐突的碎語以及過隙的光采，比其他演員更加完整詮釋我們所熟悉的狄倫。」影評們認為找凱特扮演狄倫真是神來一筆！









At precisely the moment she was being feted by the Venice jury, audiences and critics in Toronto were responding equally enthusiastically to her second stab at Queen Bess, in Working Title's Elizabeth: The Golden Age.



在凱特以狄倫風靡威尼斯的同時，多倫多的人們也無不為二度叩關的伊莉莎白一世傾倒。









This versatility underlines why Blanchett is one of the supreme screen actors of her era, but also underlines why she is not one of its best-loved stars. She is too quicksilver, too spiky. Contemplating her career, it is hard not to be reminded of another equally imperious and volatile performer from the golden age of Hollywood, namely Katharine Hepburn.



變色龍般的多才多藝說明了為何凱特是當代最耀眼的明星，也說明了為何凱特不會是人氣第一名。因為凱特實在太詭變，太難對付了。綜觀凱特的生涯表現，很難不想起同樣囂張跋扈且反覆無常的凱薩琳赫本。









Of course, Blanchett gave a virtuoso – if extraordinarily mannered – performance as Hepburn opposite Leonardo DiCaprio's Howard Hughes in Scorsese's The Aviator. She had the Hepburn hauteur and that famous drawling East Coast voice down perfectly. The trick to portraying a real-life character like Hepburn, she has suggested, is to research exhaustively: study the voice and mannerisms, watch the old interviews, read the books.



無庸置疑地，凱特的凱薩琳赫本是行家最愛。凱特完美詮釋了赫本的傲慢，以及著名的拖長東岸腔。凱特的建議是鉅細靡遺地鑽研赫本：語調和怪癖，訪問和書本。









Then, when the job begins in earnest, "throw it all away and rely on instinct".



當真正站上舞台時：「別管那麼多了，一切靠直覺本能！」









It's striking how closely her career resembles that of Hepburn. "Katharine of Arrogance", Hepburn was famously nicknamed. In the 1930s, her headstrong ambition was frowned on in Hollywood. Nor did the studios care for her choice of parts. Like Blanchett, she had an androgynous quality and a strength of character that discomfited her bosses. They couldn't understand why Hepburn wanted to cut her hair off and play a girl impersonating a boy in George Cukor's gender-bending Sylvia Scarlett. She was once voted "box-office poison" by US exhibitors.



凱特和赫本的演藝生涯不可思議地相似。自大的凱薩琳就是凱薩琳赫本的小名。三零年代，好萊塢對赫本的固執野心很感冒，片商也不是很喜歡她的選角。同樣地，凱特雌雄同體的特質以及堅毅個性讓上司們搖頭。片商們就是不能理解為什麼赫本要把頭髮剪短好男扮女裝，票房毒藥則是她的另外一個綽號。



老人痴影症：Katharine Hepburn









Nobody would be as crudely sexist today about Blanchett, yet she has been criticised for her adventurous choices of role. She never plays bland or wholly likeable types. She is not going to be the girl-next-door or the deferential wife. Sometimes, her sheer force of personality can count against her; in Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, though she gives a typically intelligent, nuanced performance, you simply can't believe in such a strong actress playing the weak-willed and fey Sheba, the north London mum and teacher who begins an affair with a teenage schoolboy.



現在沒有人會對凱特來性別歧視那套，但她的冒險選角也不是沒有被批評過。凱特從未扮演溫和或是百分之百討喜的角色，她不太可能當個鄰家女孩或是奉守三從四德的妻太。有時候，凱特的剛強反而是種阻力。凱特在醜聞筆記的表現細緻而無可挑剔，但你就是無法相信剛強如凱特就是那個脆弱又愛找死的希芭老師。



這作者有點強詞奪理，意思是凱特只能演臭娘們就是了。









Sometimes, her performances can seem eccentric and overstated. As Lola in Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried, she adopted a Russian accent so thick it might have embarrassed Lotte Lenya's Rosa Klebb. In The Good German, her stab at playing a Marlene Dietrich femme fatale was ridiculed in some quarters. "Cate Blanchett should be brought to justice by some military police force for those ridiculous contact lenses that make her look as if someone's stuck two liquorice allsorts into her eye sockets," complained The Guardian.



凱特的表演爾偶是莫名奇妙且被高估的。縱情四海裡凱特的俄國腔就有點過頭了，好德國人瑪琳黛德莉式的蛇蝎美人在某些時刻顯得荒謬可笑。「凱特布蘭琪那雙像被塞滿七彩糖果的眼神，該抓去槍斃！」



還沒看過以上兩片，無法護航。

現在看過了，縱情四海真他媽難看，凱特也真的是個 overact，好德國人則是眾人皆醉我獨醒。









At least, Blanchett is never bland. When she is bad, she is spectacularly bad. This comes from boldness. "If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously," is one of her slogans. Her interpretations are so recklessly full-blooded that if she is hitting a discordant note, the performances can be painful to watch – and listen to.



至少，凱特從來就不是個小綿羊。當她想使壞，可是壞得不得了。這得歸功於無畏之心，凱特的口頭禪：「要輸就做個光榮的輸家。」她的詮釋是如此不忌後果，一個地方不對，觀眾就得忍受整晚。









Thankfully, the off-key performances are rare. She is notoriously picky about her roles. "I've got a great agent," she once said in explanation. "She said to me, when I first made a film in America, 'Do you really want to do this? It is going to be on the video shelf for the rest of your life and you'll always know you made it.'" Ever since, if a film hasn't passed the "video shelf" test, she has refused to do it.



還好凱特很少失常。凱特對於角色是出了名地挑剔。「我的經紀人棒極了。」凱特如此解釋。「 "妳真的想清楚了嗎？往後人生旅程，電影將會一直擺在錄影帶架上，大家都知道妳拍過那部電影。" 當我第一次到美國拍片，經紀人這樣告訴我。」從此，只要是無法通過錄影帶架測驗的電影，凱特一律謝敬不敏。









Nor is she keen on small-talk with journalists. I interviewed her before The Aviator came out and made the mistake of mentioning her bath in Brighton. At the time, she lived in the seaside town. A story picked up in the press suggested that Blanchett had caused Brighton to come to a standstill while she had a huge bath installed in the top floor of her house. It had been a complicated manoeuvre involving cranes and – it was alleged – massive traffic disruption. Bathroom refurbishment, it turned out, was not a subject she was eager to pursue. "I was astounded at what they [the press] said it cost," she grumbled, adding that "when you live high up in a terraced house with narrow stairs, anything big needs to be taken up with a crane." One guesses that the British media's interest in her bathroom may have hastened her decision to leave the UK and re-establish her home in Australia.



凱特也懶得跟記者囉哩吧唆。我在採訪她時不小心提了布萊頓的浴缸。那個時候神鬼玩家還沒上檔，凱特住在海邊小鎮。傳聞凱特家頂樓浴缸翻修的勞師動眾癱瘓了布萊頓的交通，而那根本不是凱特所期望的。「哪有你們說的那麼誇張啊？當你住在有露台的房子，樓梯又不夠寬，大一點的東西都得勞駕起重機。」有人說英國媒體對浴室的關注是凱特回澳洲老家的推力。









The irritability and defiance she sometimes shows in interviews were there V C right at the start of her career. It's telling that Blanchett originally thought the play that made her name when she was starting out in Sydney was "a misogynistic piece of crap". When she was cast as the student who accuses her professor of sexual harassment in David Mamet's Oleanna, her instinct was to turn the part down because of its dubious sexual politics. She ended up appearing with Geoffrey Rush (an actor almost as protean as she is) in a production she now acknowledges as a pivotal moment in her career. In hindsight, what she relished about Mamet's play was precisely what she disliked at first: the way it provoked such strong opinions, from loathing to wild enthusiasm. "It punches an audience senseless," she said admiringly.



凱特易怒，勇於挑戰的個性構成生涯早期的風險。據說凱特認為在雪梨劇院的成名作是個沙文主義的爛貨。凱特拒絕在大衛馬密的奧莉安娜演出控告教授性侵害的學生，因為其曖昧不明的性別政治。結果凱特和華新漢湊成對，並承認那是他生涯的轉捩點。事後諸葛，凱特喜歡馬密的原因和當初抨擊馬密的原因是一樣的：馬密總是先引起爭議，觀眾再由厭惡轉為熱愛。「他打醒了我們。」凱特說到。









"Before we did Oleanna," Rush said of her, "I had seen one of Cate's school productions and was pinned to my seat, thinking, 'Who is this extraordinary creature, with this maturity of performance yet still in drama school?' Even when she's doing nothing, you get this interplay between vulnerability and assurance."



「在我們合作奧莉安娜之前，凱特在學校的表演讓我目不轉睛，這不同凡響的生物怎麼可能還只是個學生？不需要張牙舞爪就悠游猶豫與堅定之間。」









Rush's remarks hint at what has always made Blanchett so distinctive: the mix of arrogance and fragility, of harshness and introspection. It helps that she's beautiful in a Garbo-esque way; she has one of those strong, expressive faces the camera loves.



華新漢說到重點了：出於嚴肅與自省，傲慢與脆弱的綜合體。嘉寶的美，那張攝影機最愛的臉。









請見下篇：

Cate Blanchett: Queen of the screen (2)

















　　







































A Streetcar Named Desire

Nov 27—Dec 20*



By Tennese Williams

Sydney Theatre Company

Directed By Liv Ullmann



"...how often do you get to watch an actress of such virtuosity pulling out every stop of her instrument and then some?" —The New York Times on Cate Blanchett